One of my favorite sites (and pretty much the only one worth reading on good presentation style) is Presentation Zen. I really like Garr’s approach, which is highly visual.

Despite the fact that I have been giving public presentations for over a decade, I must admit I have often been guilty of many of the classic errors such as creating something that was meant to be read rather than viewed and trying to use PowerPoint as a report generation tool, particularly for internal company stuff.

In the last few years I have very consciously made an effort to move towards a more visual style, in large part based on things Garr talks about, and the feedback has been excellent. (Guy Kawasaki is another good source here and I have been following his advice for things like demos ever since I first read The MacIntosh Way in 1991.)

Well Garr has recently published a book, also called Presentation Zen, which does a great job of boiling down his philosophy on creating and giving great presentations. If giving presentations is part of your life, you should run (don’t walk) to Amazon and grab a copy.

I seriously considered not actually posting about this book because it feels like a collection of superb insider secrets that you almost don’t want anyone else to know. In the end though, my conscience got the better of me.

(Plus the cynic in me says hardly anyone who reads it will be willing to make the fairly dramatic changes in style it requires, because it can really feel like flying without a net at first and it goes against the de facto ’standard’ approach 99% of PowerPoint presentations take. Of course that’s the point though.)